July 27, 2011 Ė Epic Games, Inc. has released the July 2011 UDK Beta, the latest version of the Unreal Development Kit (UDK), the free edition of Unreal Engine 3 that provides access to the award-winning toolset used in blockbuster video games, 3D visualizations, digital films and more.

Epic is committed to providing the UDK community with regular software releases at no charge. Anyone can take advantage of the latest UE3 technology, from mobile support to DirectX 11 features, by downloading the latest beta available at www.udk.com/download.

This month, we would like to highlight Q.U.B.E., a promising UDK-powered game created by former classmates turned independent developers. Q.U.B.E. is a first-person game that presents a series of brain-teasing puzzles, ranging from physics-based challenges and 3D jigsaws to platform-based trials. We wish Toxic Games much success with their first commercial release.

Have something cool to show us? UDK projects can be promoted to the community in the Works in Progress forum and the Released Projects forum.

Itís easy to sign up as a commercial UDK developer online. Have questions? Check out our FAQ.

July 2011 UDK Beta Upgrade Notes

Post-Process Anti-aliasing
- FXAA and MLAA post-processing methods have been integrated into the engine. Post-process anti-aliasing is supported on DirectX 9 and DirectX 11.
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The left image lacks post-process anti-aliasing, while the right image does not.
Unreal Landscape Improvements
- Use the new landscape gizmo to copy and paste chunks of terrain. Import and export entire regions.
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- Landscape gizmos can be arbitrarily positioned, rotated and resized.
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- Use the brush tool to mask landscape and selectively paste over it.
- Each Unreal Landscape layer can now be assigned a physical material.
ě The DefaultPhysMaterial property on the actor addresses layers not specifically assigned a physical material.
ě During layer painting, the index of the dominant (most highly weighted) layer is stored in the collision data, and this is used by PhysX to specify the material for each quad.
Simplygon Skeletal Mesh Simplification
- Simplygon can now be used to simplify skeletal meshes the same way it can be used to simplify static geometry in UDK.
ě Generating LODs using Simplygon is also supported.
ě Morph targets are disabled for skeletal mesh LODs that have been simplified.
ě Alternate bone weightings are disabled for skeletal mesh LODs that have been simplified.
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Unreal Console on iOS
- The Unreal Console is now available for iOS development! Tapping with 4 fingers will bring it up.
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Animation Tree Comment Boxes
- UDK users can now create comment boxes in animation trees.
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Additional Improvements
- Materials can now use the vector transform node in the vertex shader!
- When re-importing FBX meshes, a new "Replace Vertex Colors" option specifies whether to overwrite colors.
- Handling of copying, moving and deleting animations between packages has been improved.
- When searching assets from the Unreal Content Browser, exclude specific tags by typing "-" and then the tag name.
- When previewing Camera Anims in the editor, itís now possible to specify an animation to play on a viewport pawn.
- The texture viewer now shows light map and shadow map textures.
- Morph targets now support parent animation components. Enable the "Update Morph When Parent Anim Component Exists" setting to take advantage of this feature.
- There is now an option to forcibly remove editor-only data when cooking PCConsole to allow for cases of shipping an exe build with the editor data disabled.
- PhysX has been upgraded for both PC and iOS development.
- Animation sequences are no longer automatically recompressed when bAnimRotationOnly is changed on the AnimSet owner.
- There is now a map check warning for when lighting is built but is not production quality.
- Normals are now correctly imported from FBX files for off-origin or scaled meshes.
- The editor console command box is now cleared after a command is executed.
- Flattened textures are now hidden in Unreal Content Browser but can be shown using a new filter button.
- An issue of poor performance in the editor when toggling AnimRotationOnly options on AnimSets has been fixed.
- An issue of poor performance in the editor when reordering levels in the level browser has been fixed.
- Toggling an Unreal Matinee track's enabled state no longer causes objects to change location.
- The static mesh editor now has an option to show an objectís pivot point.
- Normals for static meshes exported from the editor are no longer incorrectly translated and scaled.
- Animation sequences are no longer automatically recompressed when bAnimRotationOnly is changed on the AnimSet owner. Instead, itís now tracked whether or not there is a disparity between the existence of translations in the compressed animation and the value of bAnimRotationOnly. If there is a difference, a warning message is displayed in the AnimSet viewer and the RAW data is used in the previewer.
- Checks have been added to the content cooker to prevent a material from being assigned a mobile base texture at cook time if mobile flattening is turned off.
- Animation preview speed can now be controlled by a slider in the animation tree editor.